Mississippi

NATIONAL BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT

Despite the demonstrable importance and ubiquity of contraception, the truth is that
ensuring that every pregnancy is wanted and planned is difficult, at both the individual
and the societal levels. For the typical American woman to have two children, she will
spend close to three years pregnant, postpartum or attempting to become pregnant, and about three
decades—more than three-quarters of her reproductive life—trying to avoid pregnancy. Not
all women, however, are successful: About half of all pregnancies in the United States
each year—more than three million of them—are unintended. By age 45, more than half of all
American women will have experienced an unintended pregnancy, and at 2008 rates about three in ten will
have had an abortion. Nonetheless, contraceptive use can and does dramatically reduce
women's odds of having an unintended pregnancy.

DEMOGRAPHICS

In 2013, there were 642,540 women of reproductive age (aged 13–44) in Mississippi, 335,980 of whom were in need of contraceptive services and supplies. Of these:

RACE/ETHNICITY: 173,350 were non-Hispanic white; 142,980 were non-Hispanic black; and 9,490 were Hispanic.

In 2013 , there were 226,530 women in Mississippi in need of publicly supported contraceptive services and supplies. Of these, 53,330 were in need of publicly supported services because they were sexually active teenagers, and 173,210 because they had incomes below 250% of the federal poverty level.

In 2012–2013, 22% of women aged 15–44 in Mississippi were uninsured, while 17% were enrolled in Medicaid.

PREGNANCIES, BIRTHS AND ABORTIONS

In 2011, there were 50,300 pregnancies to the 603,238 women of reproductive age (15-44) in Mississippi; of those that did not result in miscarriages or stillbirths, 79% resulted in live births and 4% in induced abortions.

In 2010, 62% of pregnancies in Mississippi were unintended. There were 35,000 unintended pregnancies to women in Mississippi, producing an unintended pregnancy rate of 57 per 1,000 women of reproductive age.

Of all unintended pregnancies in Mississippi in 2010, 66% resulted in live births and 19% resulted in induced abortions.

In 2010, 81.9% of unplanned births in Mississippi were publicly funded, compared with 70.5% of all births and 55.6% of planned births.

Of the 28,200 publicly funded births in Mississippi in 2010, 18,600 were unplanned.

Unintended pregnancies in Mississippi accounted for $267.1 million in public costs in 2010, including $226.7 million in federal costs and $40.4 million in state costs.

In 2011, 2,220 women obtained abortions in Mississippi, producing a rate of 3.7 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age. Some of these women were from other states, and some Mississippi residents had abortions in other states, so this rate may not reflect the abortion rate of state residents. The rate declined 19% since 2008, when it was 4.6 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44. Mississippi represents 0.2% of all abortions in the United States.

In 2011, there were 2 abortion providers in Mississippi; 1 of those were clinics. This represents a 0% increase in overall providers and a 0% increase in clinics from 2008, when there were 2 abortion providers overall, of which 1 were abortion clinics.

In 2011, 99% of Mississippi counties had no abortion clinic; 91% of Mississippi women lived in these counties.

IMPACT OF PUBLICLY FUNDED CONTRACEPTIVE SERVICES

Publicly funded family planning services help women to avoid pregnancies they do not want and to plan pregnancies they do. In 2013, publicly funded family planning services helped women in Mississippi avoid 16,800 unintended pregnancies, which would likely have resulted in about 8,300 unplanned births and 5,700 abortions.

Contraceptive services provided at Title X-supported centers in Mississippi helped prevent 13,400 unintended pregnancies, which would likely have resulted in about 6,600 unplanned births and 4,600 abortions.

The publicly funded family planning services provided at safety-net centers in Mississippi saved the federal and state governments $98,155,000 in 2010.